Rabbi
Fackenheim came to Canada from his native Germany as a result of the Nazi
persecutions. There he earned a doctorate from the University of Toronto, where
he became professor of philosophy. Fackenheim taught that we must not give
Hitler a posthumous victory. He called this the 614th mitzvah, since the
Torah contains 613 mitzvahs or commandments.

Fackenheim
meant that we are, first, commanded to survive as Jews lest the Jewish people
perish. We are commanded , secondly, to remember always the martyrs of the
Holocaust, lest their memory perish. We are forbidden to deny or despair of
God, however much we may have to contend with him, or with belief in him, lest
Judaism perish. We are forbidden to despair of the world as the place which is
to become the kingdom of God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in he
which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted. Fackenheim taught
that to abandon any of these principles would give the Nazis another victory.

There
are those who resent the use of the phrase the 614th commandment because they
believe that one may not add or subtract anything from the Torah. Although
one may quibble over this terminology, the implications of Fackenheim's
philosophy are clear. Those who accept his view recognize that Israel and its
law of return are a necessity to prevent a second Holocaust. Such a second
Holocaust must be seen today in the context of the Muslim threat to Jewish
survival. Fackenheim's commandment furthermore implies that we must teach all
children about the Holocaust and that we must persist in commemorating it
annually, as we do each April.

Christians,
and particularly the Catholic Church, have taken Fackenheim's teaching to heart.
Therefore, Pope John Paul II visited the synagogue in Rome and denounced
anti-Judaism vehemently. His successor, Benedict XVI, visited the synagogue
in Kőln,in his homeland in Germany, and
did the same. Moreover, the Catholic Church and some Protestant churches
other than the Anglicans have removed from the liturgy all anti-Jewish
references and have enjoyed their followers not to participate in anti-Jewish
behavior. In addition, Catholic Bishops meeting in Argentina in July
of 2005 proclaimed that anti-Zionism is anti-Judaism and that no distinction
exists. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has announced that it does not wish to
convert Jews to Christianity because the covenant between Abraham and God holds
today and is irrevocable. Some Protestant denominations, other than the
Anglicans, hold these same views.

Fackenheim's
philosophy has led to considerable controversy among Jews and others. His
detractors say that one must not be Jewish only to spite Hitler but because of
the intrinsic value of Judaism. Non-Jews complain that Fackenheim gives the
impression that a Jew who marries a non-Jew is finishing the Nazi objectives.

Emil
Fackenheim was born in Halle, Germany. He studied for the rabbinate in
Berlin. He was imprisoned by the Nazis during the Kristallnacht pogrom on
November 10-11, 1938. Subsequently he was able to escape to Scotland and
then made his way to Toronto. His older brother was one of those German
Jews who refused to believe the worst and insisted on remaining in Germany,
where he was murdered.

Fackenheim
died three years ago in Toronto, Canada. Now he has joined that long list
of Jewish teachers whose optimism in the face of the unspeakable continues
to sustain us, because in the end we are still the chosen people and ďa light
unto the nationsĒ.